Which Atrocity Counts?

War is always an awful thing. This is precisely why something more than sympathy—insight, belief, and philosophy—must adjudicate between the competing images of atrocity that can be easily paraded before the world on CNN.

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This is troubling: ”[WH spokeman] Spicer appeared to draw a new red line for the Trump administration when he told reporters Monday that if a country gases a baby or puts “a barrel bomb into innocent people, I think you will see a response from this president.”
It’s ”a civil war” with many non-Syrian or Russian parties as direct or indirect participants.
By conventional understanding, at least chem weapons can at least be considered ”use of WMDs”. But ”barrel bombs” are ”conventional weapons”:http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/03/27/barrell%20bomb.jpg”
Explosives and shrapnel, essentially a jumbo grenade.
The Trump administration seems to be ”walking back” the statement that barrel bombs are justification for further involvement in Syria (IMHO, that would be as dumb as his attempt to force his way into the NFL but with much more serious and tragic consequences.
I can buy ”but he’s actually playing 4D chess!” argument so long as he leaves Syria alone.

I’m not sure we can read too much into anything Spicer says. This doesn’t strike me as a policy statement. Trump seems to have walked back some of what may have been signaled by the attack, and that’s a good thing, but we’ll have to wait and see.